Remember back when, upon returning from Puerto Rico, we got three bottle-fed calves to raise for beef? And then remember how, a couple days later, we went back to the farm to pick up a heifer calf because we (I) thought it might be fun to maybe have a milk cow someday? 

Welp, Daisy’s preggo, thanks to a little rendezvous at a neighboring farm last summer, and now her sides are bulging out most alarmingly. I don’t know anything about pregnant cows — and her size is probably perfectly normal — but as any pregnant person, or person around a pregnant person (or animal) will tell you, there always comes a point in the gestating process when one begins to question just what, or how much of whatever it is, is growing inside there, and right now it looks like Daisy’s gonna be popping out a set of twins come April. Doubtful, I know, but she’s HUGE.  

Regarding the encroaching milk tsunami, I vacillate between excitement and profound dread. Having a milk cow is kinda a big deal, I think — everyone talks about it in hushed, knowing tones — and here we are just kind of sliding into it sideways, fingers crossed. There’s a very real chance that we’re in well over our heads.

Take, for example, the following reasons why a milk cow is most definitely not a good idea:

• A Holstein (mix?) cow does NOT a family milk cow make. One is supposed to thoughtfully acquire an appropriately dainty breed of cow, not one that’s bred to be a milk producing machine, squirting out 5-9 gallons of milk daily. Oops. 
• My husband’s lactose intolerant and hates farming.
• Half the children — in other words, half the milk drinkers and half the chore dooers — no longer live here.  

BUT IN MY DEFENSE: What better time to tie ourselves down with a little farm project than in the midst of a pandemic? Also, my younger son thinks this is a fantastic idea and has agreed to spearhead it. Also also, a family milk cow is endlessly educational, providing a cross-disciplinary venture in horticulture, nutrition, husbandry, cooking, economics, and The Art of Waking Early. Plus, we have the land, the animal, the time, so why not?

(Don’t answer that.)

Not that it really matters how I feel — it’s happening — so we’re gearing up (some of us more begrudgingly than others). A couple weeks ago, my husband and son visited our neighbor-friend to observe his one-cow milking operation. My younger son has read a couple articles and made a supply list. Plans for the milking set-up are being cobbled together. I’m considering (or beginning to think about considering) purchasing a second fridge for out in the barn. And we’ll need a bunch of glass jars. Also, starter stuff for homemade sour creams and cheeses and such — once the milk hits the house, it’s MY domain.

For now, though, the biggest task is prepping Daisy for milking. She’s actually already pretty docile, but each day my younger son spends some time taking her halter on and off, leading her around, feeding her treats, and grooming her, especially around her back end so she gets used to having a human hang out back there. Next step: set up a stanchion to get her used to putting her head through and holding still while eating and being groomed. 

Once the calf is born, the (loose) plan is to, as per our milk cow-owning friend, separate Daisy from her calf every evening, milk her in the morning, and then leave the calf with her all day. Depending on how much milk Daisy gives, we may need to get a second calf to help drink it all (if Daisy doesn’t let it nurse, then we’ll have to bottle-feed the calf . . . I guess?), or we might have to get a couple pigs and feed them the extra. And we’ll probably be sharing lots of milk with family and friends, and I’ll be making tons of yogurt and ice cream.

To sum up: This could be loads of fun or it could be a disaster. Either way, we’re bound to learn something. Wish us luck!

This same time, years previous: object of terror, the quotidian (2.2.15), how we got our house, wheat berry salad, advice, please.

Quotidian: daily, usual or customary;
everyday; ordinary; commonplace

Filet mignon: raising our own grass-fed beef tastes AWESOME.

Grill-ready.

Lunchy leftovers: Half a bacon cheeseburger on toasted sourdough.

Free spinach + free sausage + free lettuce = this supper.

The pantry hang.

Hello, Saturday. Meet my husband.

Twice vaccinated!

Yet another bedroom shuffle.

Pretty pecker.
_{^{photo credit: my younger son}}

What working all day in the bitter cold looks like.

Pro-tip: if you lay too long in front of the fire, nausea may occurr.

Snowblower.

Faces of winter.

This same time, years previous: all things Thursday, chicken and sausage gumbo, ROAR, the quotidian (2.1.16), stuck buttons and frozen pipes, and just when you thought my life was all peaches, peanut butter and honey granola, rock-my-world cocoa brownies.

Early early this morning while I was still snuggled in my bed, our second child flew the coop. All day she’s been driving north to Massachusetts and her new job as a student worker at a dressage barn—

Let me back up.

At the end of last semester, she signed up on some sort of horse-related message board thingy where people looking for jobs post their information and people looking for workers post openings. She got a handful of queries from farms in Texas, South Carolina, Kentucky, etc, but nothing came of them.  

And then she got a query from a farm in Massachusetts. She responded, they responded, and within a couple weeks she’d had three phone interviews and gotten the job.

She was over the moon.

The place sounded pretty incredible — put-together and professional — so the first week of January, she, my husband, and I headed up to see the place for ourselves. 

It was our first road trip since the pandemic and it felt disconcerting, like we were doing something illegal and dangerous. At one point, we passed two hearses, a bunch of ambulances, and a huge tank of nitrogen with steam billowing out of the ice-covered pipe at the top and suddenly I had the eerie sensation that I’d been plopped into the middle of a dystopian novel in which we were fleeing north to Canada in the midst of a pandemic, can you imagine? Uh, yes, actually. I sort of can. (And then the next day on our drive home, there was the insurrection at the capitol which only intensified the otherworldly feeling.)

We arrived at the farm at dusk. An assistant trainer gave us a tour of the facilities, and then we hung out at one end of the arena and watched the various riding lessons. Since the trainers and clients were miked, the whole place was weirdly quiet, just the muffled sound of horses’ hooves and the gentle murmur of conversation.  

She’ll work six days a week caring for clients’ horses: medicating, feeding, and exercising them, as well as taking them back and forth to their paddocks (they said she’ll end up walking about twelve miles daily). As a student worker, she’s assigned to work for one of the trainers: she’ll warm up client horses for him pre-lessons, and do other horse-related tasks that go with that (I know nothing).

In exchange, she gets room and board (she’ll be staying in the farm owner’s home), a monthly stipend, and dressage training — because she doesn’t have a horse of her own, she’ll be training with one of the owner’s horses, which she got to meet.

The job is everything my daughter could wish for, and then some. By the time we wandered out of the barn and into the cold dark of early evening, she was practically vibrating with excitement. 

And then we drove home and the countdown for her move date began. Almost within minutes of learning she’d gotten the job, she’d started packing, and now she began gearing up to move out in earnest.

She leased Ellie to a family that we know through church. Our younger son is buying her chickens and goats from her, as well as taking over her job as barn manager at the neighboring farm and moving into her vacated room (he’s overjoyed). She made granola to take along (never mind that they provide all her food — she wants her granola) and bought some more winter clothes. She got her Covid test. My husband fixed up the beater car (it needed a new clutch, inspection, new tires, etc), and then she backed it right up to the foot of the porch steps, ready to load up and fly north.  

I’m sad to see her go, of course — and her departure hit my husband particularly hard —  but, for me, at least, that sadness is far outweighed by my happiness and excitement at seeing her land her dream job. 

I can’t wait to hear her stories.

***

P.S. Mid-afternoon, she texted that she’d arrived safely — huge exhale — and this evening we exchanged photos of our suppers and then she facetimed me from her cozy nest of a bed. Let the fun begin!

This same time, years previous: perfect pita, vindication, women’s march on Washington, through my lens: a wedding, the quotidian (1.27.14), and then we moved into a barn, shoofly cake.